Share This Page

Please, close it if its against the rules to link to other sites, but:

"UK industry sources have today informed us that the platform holder is readying an October launch for the system - which it will announce at E3."

"It's a surprise - we were expecting it much closer to Christmas. But I suppose it gives Nintendo the opportunity to get it front and centre in people's minds nice and early.

"In my experience, you don't launch a product that early to Christmas unless you're confident in it - and going to spend a lot of money on it. We're reassured that Nintendo is going to give it some decent backing in Q4."

3. The proptypes looked like they still needed a lot of work. Even the bottom screen wasn't meant to be working acording to one of the hands on i've read. The 3DS is still a work in progress. They stressed many times that it was a prototype.

4. Many of the games looked like tech demos, rather than something near competion. These games need completing, bug testing, exploit hunting, translating, manufacturing and then distributing.

5. Nintendo will need to have a few million of these ready for release, it's likely they will sell that worldwide on the firstday. It's takes time to manufacture, and then distribute them. They are made in China and shipped to Europe by boat. I imagine just shipping them to Europe will take 4-6 weeks.

6. Europe normally gets their consoles after the US and Japan.

Nintendo would have gotten a lot a feedback on the 3DS from E3, i'd expect that it will take 1-2 months to finalize the design. Another 2-4 weeks to tool up the factories. Another 4 weeks to produce enough of them for launch week. Then 4-6 to ship them to their hubs, and then another week to get them to retailers, and another week to make sure all retailers have stock.

Then it's likely to be a Japan only launch, with the US and European following afterwards. It may be possible they could go for a November Japanese launch, followed by a March launch for Europe and the US. I still think that's a little on the optimistic side for Japan.